Blogging for Good in the Modern World

30 January 2009

Pixelpipe: Distribute your Media Content through Multiple Networks

Given the constantly growing number of micro-blogging, photo sharing, and video hosting sites, it is getting harder and harder to keep all these accounts updated. One of the outstanding applications, according to the ReadWriteWeb review, developed to post media files to a variety of services is Pixelpipe. Pixelpipe takes care of the distribution of your files, so that you can simultaneously post a picture to flickr and Facebook, and send a message with a link to that picture to Twitter. Thanks to a large number of updates in the last few weeks, Pixelpipe has become even more versatile than ever before and now lets you share almost any kind of file.

Pixelpipe

While other services like Tubemogul or Ping.fm focus on specific media types, Pixelpipe works with audio and video files, photos, text messages, and now even supports most other types of documents.

Post to 60 Different Services

Pixelpipe has already added support for dozens of new services since its launch, and the amount is growing pretty fast. You can post images and videos to all the prominent video and photo sharing sites, including Youtube, Vimeo, kyte, SmugMug, flickr, Picasa, Facebook, and Photobucket. Pixelpipe also lets you post photos to most popular blogging platforms.

Pixelpipe

Post PDF Files to Twitter

This month, Pixelpipe launched a new feature that lets you posts links to videos, photos, PDF files, or any other document to text-only micro-blogging service like Twitter, Rejaw, FriendFeed, or identi.ca. Pixelpipe will simply add a link to the document to your text messages and the files will be hosted on Pixelpipe’s Amazon S3 storage.

Even if Pixelpipe’s internal video player and document viewer isn’t compatible with a file, it will still give you a link to download the document. The upload limit is 200 megabytes.

Post from Anywhere

One of our favorite features of Pixelpipe is that the company has developed plugins for almost every conceivable desktop application for Mac, Linux, and Windows PCs. You can post videos from Windows Movie Maker, photos from iPhoto, Live Gallery, or Picasa, and when all else fails, you can also just email your media files to your personal Pixelpipe address. For mobile use, Pixelpipe provides applications for the iPhone, Android, and Nokia N Series phones.

Power users can also create routing tags (think: @friendfeed or @picasa), which allow you to selectively send items to a specific service or a group of services.

Verdict

The latest round of updates has turned Pixelpipe into an even more versatile tool. Now, sharing a PDF file with your Twitter friends is as easy as emailing it to your secret Pixelpipe address. If you often send the same document to a variety of services (or if you just want to send a picture from your phone to Twitter, but also keep a copy on Flickr), Pixelpipe is definitely worth trying.

Pixelpipe

Video Presentation:

Pixelpipe

25 January 2009

Submitting Blogger Sitemap to Google Webmaster

Submitting your Blogger.com or Blogspot.com blog site to Google Webmaster will enable Google to find, index, and rank your site. For those who are new to this, you may go to the official Google Webmaster Tools site to create a new Webmaster profile.

Upon logging in using your Gmail account, key in your blog site URL, and click OK. You will then be asked to verify your site. This is to ascertain that you are indeed the owner of the site.

There are two ways to verify your site. You can either add a Meta Tag or Upload an HTML file. If you are using the Meta Tag method, Google will generate a Meta Tag code. Copy the META tag that is generated for you, and paste it in your site’s home page in the first section of the page, before the first section. What you do is to go to your Blogger dashboard. Under Template ->Edit HTML, somewhere near the top of the script, add the Meta Tag as follows:-

<head>
<META TAG>
<b:include data=’blog’ name=’all-head-content’/>

Replace the META TAG with the code generated by Google Webmaster. Once done, Save the Template. When you return to Google Webmaster site, you can click the button that says “Verify”.

Note: The second method of uploading an HTML file is NOT applicable to Bloggers using Blogger.com or Blogspot.com because this requires you to upload a file to the root directory of your Blog, which is not possible. There is therefore only one method for you to verify your site, and that is by inserting the Meta Tag as explained above.

After you have had your site verified, click on the Sitemaps tab as shown below. By adding a Sitemap, you will be providing Google with more details and information about your Blog. With this, Google will crawl your site, report information on any errors in the Sitemaps tab, and index your Blog site at a faster rate.

Submit Blogger Sitemap to Google Webmaster

Click the link that says “Add a Sitemap”. This will take you to another screen where you should choose the type “Add General Web Sitemap”. The Sitemap URL for any normal website is usually the index page that is stored in the highest-level directory of that site. In the case of Blogger.com or Blogspot.com, the only way to add a Sitemap is to use either of the following 2 Sitemaps:-

http://YOURBLOGNAME.blogspot.com/rss.xml

http://YOURBLOGNAME.blogspot.com/atom.xml

Remember to replace YOURBLOGNAME with that of your Blog’s. For Blogger blogs, do not add "www." to YOURBLOGNAME. Once you have added your Sitemaps, you will receive a confirmation telling you that reports are being generated but “may take several hours to update”. Congratulations! You have successfully added your Sitemaps. When you login to your Google Webmaster days later, you should be able to see the indexed pages and statistics of Google webcrawl of your Blog.

Leave the meta tag in the template if you want to view the statistics of your site. If Google can’t find the meta tag, it will show an error message in your webmaster toolbox and you may have to verify your site again.

Source: http://tips-for-new-bloggers.blogspot.com/2007/02/submit-blogger-sitemap-to-google.html

22 January 2009

LiveJournal on the Verge of Collapse

At the midst of the terrible recession, on the day, when Microsoft announced 5,000 employees workforce cuts, information on the 12 to 20 employees lay offs by LiveJournal does not look neither surprising, nor unexpected. However, if think about the total number of employees in the LiveJournal San Francisco office as 28 employees only, you understand that this cut might be really fatal for the LJ bloggers platform functioning. Valleywag reports that the social-media pioneer laid off all of its product managers and engineers, “leaving only a handful of finance and operations workers - which speaks to a website to be left on life support.” Matt Berardo, a Yahoo executive hired on last summer, has also left.

Founded in 1999 by Brad Fitzpatrick as a way to keep his friends from high school updated about his activities, LiveJournal was among the first blogging services and social networks. The company was bought in 2005 by blogging-software company Six Apart and then sold two years later to Russian online-media company SUP.

According to the statement from LiveJournal, the company’s servers, technical operations, administration and customer-service teams will remain in the United States. However, global product development and design now will be coordinated out of the Moscow office.

Andrew Paulson

The company’s Moscow-based management has told employees it blames the "global economic downturn" - the kind of pat excuse every boss is giving for layoffs, even when mismanagement or a bad business plan is really to blame.

The brutal, abrupt cuts suggest something different: That Sup founder Andrew Paulson (above), who paid an estimated $30 million for LiveJournal a little over a year ago, has realized his expensive mistake in buying at the top of the bubble. Someone familiar with the company tells us Paulson lost the CEO job last summer to Annelies van den Belt, a former News Corp. executive, and was given the meaningless title of chairman; he’s essentially out of the company now.

18 January 2009

Free Tool to submit your pages to Social Bookmarking sites

Submitting your pages to Social Bookmarking Sites provides multiple opportunities for your content exposure without violating any rules, creating similar publication, and with minimum time and efforts spent. The offer presentation will show you a way to make the process easier for your visitors to submit your site automatically to major social bookmarking site. That might give you an enormous boost in terms of site exposure and related AdSense income.

1. About BlogSocializer

BlogSocializer is a simple widget for your Blogger based blog. It enables blog readers or visitors to submit your blog to major social bookmarking sites, including Digg, Technorati, Delicious, Yahoo! MyWeb, Google Fusion, Blink, Furl, and Simpy.

2. Copy the code
First just copy the widget code below. (right click, than Copy)


<script language="JavaScript" type="text/javascript">

</script>
<script language="JavaScript" src="http://blogsocializer.googlepages.com/blogsocializer.js" type="text/javascript"></script>

<img src="http://blogsocializer.googlepages.com/technorati.gif" border="0"/>
<img src="http://blogsocializer.googlepages.com/delicious.gif" border="0"/>
<img src="http://blogsocializer.googlepages.com/google.gif" border="0"/>
<img src="http://blogsocializer.googlepages.com/digg.gif" border="0"/>
<img src="http://blogsocializer.googlepages.com/yahoo.gif" border="0"/>
<img src="http://blogsocializer.googlepages.com/blink.gif" border="0"/>
<img src="http://blogsocializer.googlepages.com/furl.gif" border="0"/>
<img src="http://blogsocializer.googlepages.com/simpy.gif" border="0"/>
<img src="http://blogsocializer.googlepages.com/stumble.gif" border="0"/>
 
<a href="http://blogsocializer.googlepages.com/">[get this widget]</a>


3. Paste the code
Now paste the code to your Blogger template. Can work either on new or classic template. In New template (.xml mode) you can simply add a new widget in ’edit layout’ area. But for classic template you just need to paste it at ’edit html’ area. Just for tips, you may insert the code below post content area. You can find some templates with this widget ready to use at TheFachia.

4. Save and Test
Now time to test your new widget. Try to submit one page of your blog to Digg or Delicious. And see how simple it works. Or you can test the script now as demo how it works. Submit this page to one of your favorite social bookmarking below.

You can find detailed instructions of adding new widget here: http://www.smartbloggerz.com/2008/04/how-to-add-bookmarker-widgets-in.html

Developers website: http://blogsocializer.googlepages.com/index.htm